Detroit-area plant where Rosie the Riveter worked facing demolition

YPSILANTI TOWNSHIP, MICH.—The Detroit-area factory where Rosie the Riveter showed that a woman could do a “man’s work” by building Second World War-era bombers, making her an enduring symbol of American female empowerment, will be demolished if money can’t be found to save it.

The Willow Run Bomber Plant, a 135-hectare former Ford Motor Co. factory west of Detroit that churned out nearly 9,000 B-24 Liberator bombers during the Second World War, is slated to be torn down unless a group can raise $3.5 million by Thursday to convert at least some of the structure into a new, expanded home for the nearby Yankee Air Museum.

“The younger generation needs to know what people went through and be able to go and see what they did and how they did it for our country,” Larry Doe, a 70-year-old Ypsilanti Township resident who has given to the cause, said recently before joining other donors for a trip on a B-17....